More on the need for educational transmission in p2p May 2, 2010

In response to Sam Rose's post (copied below)

As for the "problems" we are trying to solve, well, that depends on what problems currently need to be faced by people, and which of those problems require some "learning".

By "people" I usually mean people at Fantsuam, represented by John Dada, but we do connect with people/communities in other locations too.

The range of problems in a community is as wide as the range of problems in a family - ie from birth to death and everything in between. This short video from my colleague John Dada in his (voluntary) role at Fantsuam Foundation may help to put that wide statement into some kind of context .

This earlier post to peer to peer http://dadamac.posterous.com/p2p-research-fwd-call-for-papers-on-networked may also help to illustrate the kind of learning that I mean.

Regarding " Where are the intersections of real, actual trust now? And, where is the fertile ground from which new trust can grow?"

Dadamac has strong trust between John Dada and me - which gives excellent UK-Nigeria trust and cross cultural collaboration. John has a huge high-trust network on the ground in and around Fantsuam and in much wider pan African and international networks. My trust networks are a mixture of online contacts (developed through nearly ten years of activity online) plus F2F contacts mostly in Nigeria, Kenya and London.

It is hard to label my networks - but I suppose that some of my trust intersections in London are with academics, some with entrepreneurs, some with social (or social media) activists.  They all tend to be people who are also active online.

Our online high trust is person to person (I guess that is the only kind of trust there is) - which includes various organisations through the people behind these organisations, such as Kabissa http://kabissa.org/ and Peoples-Uni http://www.peoples-uni.org/ and the ICT4D Collective http://www.ict4d.org.uk/.

I was fortunate enough to be included in Franz's workshop in Vienna in January, where he did a grand job of building relationships of trust between the participants. In fact one of the participants commented that Franz had created a community, and that afterwards we should create a "community of our communities".

Pamela

On 2 May 2010 15:35, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose@gmail.com> wrote:

1. As a person deeply steeped in the development of technology of all
types on a daily basis:  technology will succeed when it has an
architecture that affords it's employment in problems people care
about solving. So, all of the groups Franz mentions above could start
out by asking "what are the problems the communities we are connected
with trying to solve?" to people in communities, and pooling their
resources into creating an architecture that is designed for
interoperability first, and in which development is driven by people
it serves. Otherwise, *access* to technology in ways that are useful
for many people will always remain out of reach of many (even when it
is freely available).

2. These systems must have *embedded* education. My friend Ross
MacDonald says it best (quoting his entire post here):

(quote)
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http://localfoodsystems.org/pragmatics-knowledge-transfer-business-and-business-cluster-development-0

Pragmatics of knowledge transfer for business and business cluster development:

1. What does the curriculum look like?

2. How does it work?

3. What are some example topics?

As noted in an earlier post, the educational objective for supporting
business growth is to expand the collaborative communication skills of
emerging groups by developing a set of appropriately timed learning
opportunities, structured as a flexible framework and delivered on a
group-by-group basis. Four values guide knowledge transfer activities:
(1) learner-centered, (2) adapted to specific groups, (3) timed for
maximum receptivity and benefit, and (4) makes best use of real
examples and cases.

In this post I address the three pragmatic questions above.

1. What does the curriculum look like?
Actually it is a "stealth curriculum," meaning that, in the ideal, the
knowledge transfer is indistinguishable from the activities of people
who are building business clusters. This is not a "learn now, apply
later" approach. Instead it is a "do now and here's some tools to
help" approach.  The rationale: learning is best delivered when people
reach out for the learning and pull it in.  When learning is pushed
onto people, they tend to resist.  Thus, the curriculum is a set of
evolving and easily adapted modules.  Moreover, each module provides
knowledge about tools and processes delivered on an as needed basis.
Moreover, tasks and content particular to the group will be inserted
into each module. By timing the delivery and ensuring its relevance to
suit group needs, learning happens in the process of doing business: a
stealth curriculum.

2. How does it work?
The short answer is in recurring but progressive loops.  Here's what
that means.  Think cycles.  Each time knowledge is stealthily
transferred, it progresses through these functions: design, deliver,
feedback and adapt.  These four steps comprise one cycle and ensure
that the knowledge transfer process continues to evolve, improve, and
remain relevant. In addition, testimonials, examples, and stories will
be collected and fed back into the modules.  The examples illustrate
tools and their applications and so should also stimulate confidence
and creativity.  The curriculum therefore enhances the sustainability
of businesses and business ecosystems.

3. What are some example topics?
Example topics include: techniques for sharing documents and plans
especially in regard to business case and business ecosystem
development, tracking group progress, identifying and overcoming
obstacles to group progress, creating productive linkages with local
schools, and enhancing student-community connections. This list is
illustrative, not comprehensive.  While we can anticipate some
particular needs and so prepare in advance for them, there will be
other needs that we can't anticipate at this point, but that will
require a module.

Knowledge transfer is critical for our vision of a set of "business
ecosystems,"  which refers to a network of related businesses that
work together to strengthen each business and enhance their
collaborations, and so that, as a cluster, they become sustainable and
increasingly powerful economic engines in their respective locales.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

(end quote)

The above is an example of education embedded into actual activities.
The above project is funded by grants from governments and private
institutions. So, this effectively means in reality that access and
politics of control in this project are not accessible to everyone

In P2P Education suggested by Franz, Michel, Daniel Araya and others,
we can go even further than what Ross writes about above. The idea of
embedding education and literacies is as described by Ross above is
right. However, in P2P systems, we can create relationships of
resource sharing and pooling, and systems of decision making that
remove hierarchical control of the development of these resources
(both technological and educational).

In the coming months, Future Forward Institute/Forward Foundation are
going to work with Michel Bauwens and P2P Foundation to create a
system of proposal, needs assessment/evaluation, collective decision
making, collective funding/contributing for building of p2p
technology, literacies, resources. This is a large undertaking and
will take some time to fully develop. Are we  truly *ready* to
participate in such a system, where control is collaborative and
non-centralized?

I think, if we are to create working relationships among all of the
various groups and people now loosely stitched together, we need to
ask the really hard questions:

- Where are the intersections of real, actual trust now? And, where is
the fertile ground from which new trust can grow?

- What is the purpose, the end goal of collaboration? What is it that
*we* (not you or me) want to accomplish?

- Assuming we can get that far, how do we as the "experts" work
together to clear paths and get out of the way so that the multitudes
of others currently shut out of access can move forward with solving
their problems of existence? How can we involve people who now don't
have the slightest clue as to what any of us are talking about? Those
people outnumber us exponentially. We have very few ways to listen to
them now.